What Does It Mean To Give 100%?

• put the Saquon plot

Background

• Effort is intangible and subjective

• Currently no objective measure of effort exists in the NFL

• Idea: previous research has explored pro soccer players reaching theoretical max acceleration capacity ¹

• Goals:

  • Improve estimation of individual acceleration-speed (A-S) profiles using statistical models

  • Assess how frequently players operate near or exceed their limits as a proxy for effort

Data: 2022 NFL Season ¹

• Game, play, player data from Weeks 1-9: 136 games

• Player tracking data: each observation is a frame in 10 fps

• Pre-processing:

  • Filtered to running plays where a running back (RB) is the ball carrier

  • Trimmed each play to frames between handoff and end of play

  • Derived directional acceleration

Motivation: Estimate each RB’s theoretical maximum acceleration frontier (Morin et al., 2021)

Effort Metric #1

Effort Metric #2

Back-up RBs consistently lead in both effort metrics

Effort metrics do not show a strong correlation with play outcomes

Discussion

• A-S-based effort alone does not explain performance

• Another way to validate effort metrics?

• Change the definition of effort? Incorporate game context?